Women getting the Death pentaly - Essay Example

What is death penalty? According the American Heritage Dictionary of English Language (2000), death penalty refers to, “a sentence of punishment by execution.” In legal terms, death penalty is synonymous to capital punishment. Capital punishment means it is the most serious punishment that one can be accorded. Death penalty is often imposed on offenders of murder and mutiny whose cases have been proven beyond reasonable doubts. The execution of offenders on death row may be done through, lethal injection, electorocution, shooting and hanging among other methods.

The execution methods vary from one country to the other. In America, lethal injection and electrocution methods are commonly used. Having explicated death penalty, it is safe to delve into discussing whether women should be accorded the same or not. Statistics indicate that there has been gender biasness in imposing death penalties on capital offenders with women being the beneficiaries of the partiality. According to Death Penalty Information Centre (2012), “death sentencing rate and death row population has remained small for women as compared to men; from 1973 to 2011, 174 death penalties have been imposed upon female offenders, constituting 2% of all death sentences in America.

” Out of the 174 only 12 of them have been actually executed between, 1973-2011; the remaining 162 are still on a death row. Statistics unveils gender disparity in imposing death penalties. Barron (2006) admits that there is favoritism in death sentencing between men and women; he observes that demographics on men versus women death row prisoners reveal that men suffer more death penalties than women. Is this really fair? Why the favoritism? The society has witnessed a long struggle to liberate women from derogatory and oppressive chains of male chauvinism.

Today, there are high degrees of women and girl child empowerment, and the equality is steadily being realized, safe for a few rigid societies. Men and women